The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display having a wide viewing angle range.
Conventional liquid crystal displays generally use TN (Twisted Nematic) or STN (Super Twisted Nematic) type apparatuses.
Each of these liquid crystal displays comprises a liquid crystal cell having a liquid crystal layer in which liquid crystal molecules are twisted at a predetermined twist angle between a pair of transparent substrates on the front and rear sides, each of which has a transparent electrode on its inner surface, and front and rear polarizers sandwiching the liquid crystal cell.
However, the TN- or STN-type liquid crystal display has a narrow observation angle range, i.e., viewing angle in which display with satisfactory contrast can be observed.
More specifically, in the conventional TN-type liquid crystal display, light obliquely incident on the liquid crystal display with respect to light incident from the normal direction has an optical path length through the liquid crystal layer, which changes depending on the incident angle. For this reason, retardation corresponding to the incident angle occurs, and the transmittance changes depending on the direction of light incidence, i.e., the observation direction. Hence, the observation angle range, i.e., viewing angle in which display with satisfactory contrast can be observed becomes narrow, and the display suffers color tinge.